Water plays a key role in economic development for Native American communities
Image from Ak-Chin Indian Community
Managing water resources here in the arid Southwest has always been an issue. For the most part, annual rainfall and runoff from snowpack in the mountains have never been enough by themselves to meet the demand of burgeoning economic activity and ever-growing populations, even before the recent drought and climate change began to impact the environment.
Many metro area governmental agencies, water experts and utilities have been working for decades to plan for long-term water sustainability and the result has been the development of a diverse portfolio of water resources, a unique water banking system and water reclamation programs that have mostly averted the full-on water crisis that Arizona’s western neighbor, California, is now experiencing.
For some Native American communities, however, the need is still acute. In the Navajo Nation, for example, 40 percent of homes are without running water. In fact, vast areas of the Navajo and Hopi Reservations must haul in weekly allocations of water.
